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Basic Information

Date of Birth

January 19, 1969 (49)

About dm4hire

Introduction:

Iowa Gamers' Association seeking players

About Me:

I am a 20+ year veteran of gaming. I currently am the president of a local gaming group in Des Moines hosting various games at Mayhem Comics in Clive. See my game details for more information about Iowa Gamers' Association and the games we play.

Location:

Des Moines, IA

Sex:

Male

Age Group:

31-40

My Game Details

Details of games currently playing and games being sought.

Town:

Des Moines

State:

Iowa

Country:

USA

Game Details:

Iowa Gamers' Association (IGA) was established on May 25, 2002 dedicated to providing the best experience in role-playing & gaming in Iowa, bringing together a variety of players from around the state for an enjoyable night of gaming.

Our primary focus is Living Campaigns supported by the RPGA or Organized Play groups. These campaigns include the new Living Realms, the ever growing Living Arcanus, and the Pathfinder Society. Living Realms will feature the first campaign in the RPGA to use the new Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. Pathfinder Society uses the upcoming Pathfinder RPG Beta, the world’s first massive play test of a role-playing game from Paizo. Living Campaigns are designed to be played by people throughout the world.

Living Campaign material is not our only focus, nor is D&D. Other games played by our members include the Three Dragon Ante Card Game, D20 Modern, World of Darkness, and various other games. We also run home campaigns based in the Eberron and Points of Lig

General Information

Product Reviews & Ratings

2 Friends

My Game Details

Town:

Des Moines

State:

Iowa

Country:

USA

Game Details:

Iowa Gamers' Association (IGA) was established on May 25, 2002 dedicated to providing the best experience in role-playing & gaming in Iowa, bringing together a variety of players from around the state for an enjoyable night of gaming.

Our primary focus is Living Campaigns supported by the RPGA or Organized Play groups. These campaigns include the new Living Realms, the ever growing Living Arcanus, and the Pathfinder Society. Living Realms will feature the first campaign in the RPGA to use the new Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. Pathfinder Society uses the upcoming Pathfinder RPG Beta, the world’s first massive play test of a role-playing game from Paizo. Living Campaigns are designed to be played by people throughout the world.

Living Campaign material is not our only focus, nor is D&D. Other games played by our members include the Three Dragon Ante Card Game, D20 Modern, World of Darkness, and various other games. We also run home campaigns based in the Eberron and Points of Lig

More information:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/IAGamersAssociation/

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Friday, 13th March, 2015

dm4hire - you are mostly correct in your corrections of my words, but its close enough :)
Honestly the process of calculating what you can afford to print and various funding levels while estimating how many backers it would require to get to those points is daunting to say the least, and it is sadly the rarely talked about dark side of these projects.
The book will be as big as possible based on final funding levels and I am sure that those who do back it will be more than happy with the final product. I am actually being told that a chunk of the book could be released in the next few days as a preview. If/When it happens I will be sure to link it for everyone here.
Please keep the questions coming - be it on this topic or the game itself!
~dkheinrich

dm4hire - also a rumor floating around about a possible bonus gift for backers to celebrate funding in under 7 hours. I will update as I can.
Also - you hit the nail on the head - free content additions for hitting achievements, it is meant to be a fun wacky way to keep the #SOTDLKS tag floating about as much as possible. Take a look at the Schwalb Entertainment Facebook page and see some of the things posted so far!

Wednesday, 13th February, 2013

That's farther than I'd go, both as an IP lawyer and an IP holder. Some stuff you really don't want out there for a good reason. Besides, the ever increasing renewal costs would eventually put unused IP into the public domain at some point.As dm4hire says, it really wouldn't be an issue unless there was someone who actually wanted it "out there". If they do, then after a certain initial period (variable by IP type), I think the supposition should be that it's in the "public interest" for it to be released. That's not to say that license fees can't be levied, but if there is demand then it should be made available.

Thursday, 15th March, 2018

I could see Resonance working for non-casters, but it would be nice if they give casters an advantage by either replacing the roll with their arcane lore check or receiving class bonus that allows them extra uses. There could also be a feat that increases the usage per day. Outside of the tracking issue, I like that they are trying to fix the problem. I think, as mentioned before, if they focus on fixing the problems that tend to lead to Christmas tree style of playing they would eliminate the need for it.
I'm not seeing how this eliminates the walking magic emporium issues of 3.x/pf. With Resonance, you have a reason to carry around dozens of spare magic items just in case. Sure, don't need that ring of frost resistance in the desert, so don't power it this morning. But do power the ring of fire resistance. Oh, and green dragon in these parts? better charge the ring of acid resistance. It's not like using Resonance can take a lot of time since you need it to activate a wand. At least wi...

Wednesday, 14th March, 2018

I could see Resonance working for non-casters, but it would be nice if they give casters an advantage by either replacing the roll with their arcane lore check or receiving class bonus that allows them extra uses. There could also be a feat that increases the usage per day. Outside of the tracking issue, I like that they are trying to fix the problem. I think, as mentioned before, if they focus on fixing the problems that tend to lead to Christmas tree style of playing they would eliminate the need for it.
I found resonance being baked into the core rules to be odd. This has never been an issue with our groups... but then our DMs never showered players in magic items. So, it would be pushing a fix for a problem on us that we never had... and, as I said early on, it feels kludgy.

Wednesday, 19th July, 2017

Unless I've missed something in all the announcements, DDB is not a VTT. Even with an initiative tracker and encounter builder (?) it will not work like ROll20 or Fantasy Grounds where you can have a map that all players can see, tokens to move on the maps, and virtual dice. I get that some people will find this useful, but those of us who have already invested in Roll20 or FG don't really get any benefit from this.
And if you aren't already using Roll20 or FG, consider that you can get what DDB offers and a VTT.
This is not correct. This is a complimentary product to Roll20 and FG, not a replacement. You can use them simultaneously, and you can transfer things from DDB to Roll20 and FG for example (or at least that is the plan). I use Roll20 a lot, and it's not a character generator. You can fill out a character sheet with it and it will fill in some data for you, but that's not a character generator. If you ever used the actual character generator created by WOTC for 4e (in the later...

Wednesday, 28th December, 2016

I don't really see Eberron as Sci-Fantasy. It's more steampunk, which tends to still fall into fantasy.
I agree, but it's the closest thing Wizards has to a Sci-Fantasy setting that's reasonably popular. There's Spelljammer, but I don't see that making a comeback before Eberron does.

Thursday, 10th March, 2016

Yes, they just shared the same mechanics.
As for Wick doing L5R, he has announced he will be doing 7th Sea: Far East in 2017. I think it will be all the stuff he wanted to do with L5R, but was never allowed. It might give L5R a run for its money if FFG doesn't do a good job with it.
I'm not following the project (don't have the $$$ to back it and I rather not torture myself) so I didn't knew about this.
Far East is an add? Or it is a project not connected to the KS?

7th Sea has a pretty strong fan base and add that it shared the same system as Legend of the Five Rings many of those players dabbled with it or at least bought the books. Now that L5R is on hold until Fantasy Flight releases something new (they bought the rights from AEG) many L5R fans are probably buying in to reminisce and maybe expand their campaign into old territory that was lacking updated resources.
Interesting...are Lo5R and 7th Sea set in the same world (like Forgotten Realms and Kara-Tur)? Or am I misreading that?

Tuesday, 24th March, 2015

I also hope this wasn't their big announcement for the AGE system. Blue Rose is a nice setting, but it doesn't seem like that big news. I own all the books and still run into several people that when they see the books in a store are unaware it has been around for awhile. It wasn't that big of a game when it first came out.
It isn't. The other announcement comes later.
Allen

Tuesday, 27th January, 2015

The humans are the bottom dwellers because for what we are supposed to represent in a fantasy world, they are not. Humans are always depicted as rash, diverse, excel in whatever they focus on, constantly changing their goals and professions compared to the long lived races in the game. Part of me wishes they would have put racial restrictions back in, but modified to more up to date standards. Maybe require a higher stat to multiclass compared to what Humans need. Increase the XP to level if they multiclass. Something that makes you think, you know I'll play a human because they can do whatever they want.
Which is exactly what the feat and the skill represent.
Either excelling in one area, or diversifying into another.
Whereas the other races come out fixed, humans come out different each time.
Half elves, slightly less so.

Monday, 26th January, 2015

The problem I have with it is everyone who thinks it is awesome to get the feat are still thinking in old edition terms when I talk to them. They are thinking min/max and that only forces the character to a focus that once it is outside it's element it is useless. 5e really seems to play to the need to play broad, not narrow. Thus the balance of replacing stat bumps with feats and vice verse. Feats have broadened out some, but they are still pretty focused.
This makes no sense to me. As someone who is advocating for feats, it is precisely *not* in min/max terms that I am presenting them. Min/max, you take the attribute bonus. In no previous edition have gets (or their equivalent) been this broad or this rare.

Saturday, 24th January, 2015

I for one hope they keep the player info in the free PDF so there is no reason for the players to buy the PotA book. I understand it will lower sells, but as a GM I don't like my players having access to the stuff I am running. That said I also hope that all the free stuff finds its way into print form, similar to how TSR use to do the "Best of Dragon" books compiling all the best articles into one book.
One option I am wondering is if there would be a market for print on demand conversion info or at least PDFs that would update key settings. As pointed out if they kept the core material of some products unchanged and just changed the stat blocks and edition specific material they could easily make books available again pretty fast. I wonder how copyright law would affected a 3P if they just released that info and didn't add anything from the actual product (so you would have a page that said "on page X of product Y replace the stat blocks for Orc with this stat block) and sell it for a m...

Monday, 1st September, 2014

I've looked over the races section and even with the optional rules for humans they don't seem to line up with the other races. What is the benefit to playing human?
Remember that a lot of feats give +1 to a stat and have a bonus. One that stands out here is Heavy Armour Mastery - +1 Strength and DR 3/Non-magical weapons. Which makes humans in heavy armour the toughest.

Sunday, 31st August, 2014

My thought here would be to just give humans an extra background, but they may only choose the equipment from one of them and they cannot be similar backgrounds. This would fit with human nature. A person is raised by their family to be X profession and then left due to one circumstance or another and started to become Y profession only to fall into adventuring or what have you. If for some reason the backgrounds offer the same skills or weapons you do not stack and don't get to pick a replacement.
I really like the idea of extra backgrounds, but I don't think it should be based on race. If it were, then it would be really hard to justify it not being another feature of the ling-lived elves, and they're strong enough already.
What I had hoped for through the play test was that rogues would get an extra background. That's they way it was at the start of the play test (the extra background was chosen between a short-list that included "thief" and "thug" iirc), but the idea is robust and...

I've looked over the races section and even with the optional rules for humans they don't seem to line up with the other races. What is the benefit to playing human?
They get +6 stat points or +2 stat points, a skill and a FEAT at first level. They had to pump up the other races a bit in the release to make them competitive with human!

Monday, 25th August, 2014

Friend of mine actually stumbled onto some news over at RPG Geek. It has some good info about Onyx Path which I hadn't heard as well as mentions a few other games in addition to the stuff we've already discussed in this thread.
Thank you so much for the link. That's exactly it. I've been looking around for thorough GenCon coverage since it happened, and that roundup is the best collection of major news from the Con.
A new World of Darkness is huge news, and Savage Lankhmar sounds like a great fit as well.
Don't be so hard on Morrus and EN World, though: The site's focus is the F20 diaspora and related designers' projects, so it is natural that the news is related to people who have written PHBs, DMGs, or MMs. World of Darkness, Savage Worlds, Feng Shui, etc. are not so much on EN World's radar-- nor on the radar of most of the site's public, which is why Pathfinder grabs all the ENies votes over games like Hillfolk and Shaintar. Different strokes for different folks.

Friday, 22nd August, 2014

I'm not sure if everyone has moved over to Facebook and so people need to be following the right pages over there or more likely as it seems most people just didn't care. Worse come to worse I am getting a sense that maybe it was a case of people thinking that someone else would write something and then no one did.
I have seen more "noise" on FB and G+ about GenCon than here so far.
The Pinnacle news about Lankhmar I would think is huge since it is a return of a classic setting, based on a popular book series. If I had not asked I probably wouldn't have heard about it, assuming I didn't miss the announcement before Gencon if it was done.
I did an actual double take when I was listening to the Savage World podcast when this was announced. Two people that did work on it back in the TSR days -Shane Hensley, creator of Savage Worlds and Tim Brown (of Dark Sun and the new Dragon Gods) - are back in the saddle on this one. Just take my money now.

Thursday, 31st July, 2014

Firefly is actually current. Though still waiting for the book to come out.
And don't get confused - Firefly and Serenity aren't the same game at all. Firefly is a rolling, backfiring romp of the sort I'd love to play Police Academy with. Or any other game where things spiral out of control ridiculously. Light, fast, entertaining, and makes you think on your feet. Serenity is much grittier and to me the rules system is simply ugly.

Wednesday, 23rd April, 2014

While I don't think they want the entire game to pan out in 20 mins, I do think they want to fix it so combat takes no longer than that.
The Dancy quote is that D&D is '20 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours'. I've always thought that it was wrong, for me and many people who play. I know many folks who it is true for. I usually end up suggesting a different hobby for those folks. An rpg for those folks would not appeal to me generally. Might be a fun filler game, but not my cuppa. That's why I think Dancy is wrong about that quote, he, I think, ascribes it to all players. I think the problem with RPG's is finding the folks that would dig it. Doing that is the key to growing the hobby. Not making the games appeal to the mass market. IMHO.
I like the idea of Mikes that would have D&D in many different forms of entertainment, maybe that's the way to find those folks. I'm a bit worried that Mike Mearls also thinks that D&D is '20 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours'. Not deeply worried, mind, most...